Members of the National Assembly got a fat salary increase this year - and on Friday they earned it. When it wrapped at after one on Saturday morning, the budget debate had been running for almost 14 hours. It was a marathon session full of oratorical flourishes, gallow's humor, cutting personal attacks, cute Creole proverbs, and all the raw, raunchy stuff that makes politics the cutthroat game that it is.
But hey, don't hate the players; hate the game - and a few did try to rise above the usual rhetoric and grandstanding to pursue a people's agenda led by "Boots" Martinez who broke the party line when he endorsed the bill to tax EPZ's - but only if it takes from the greedy to give to the needy.
Hon. Anthony "Boots" Martinez,
"I have to support the EPZ amendment because when I see the EPZ vehicles at disco I have to wonder if they are exporting anything from the disco. I see people driving to school."
"I listened to the debate and heard Senator Barry Bowen talk about driving a Rolls Royce from pond to pond and that is craziness. I hope that he could donate some of that money to the residents of Port Loyola so we can fix up our community."
"I don't associate with big people, I am for the little man and at the end of the day my grandmother used to tell me that in the horserace the thoroughbred will tumble down and the mule will win."
Hon. Cordel Hyde,
"A lot of people have benefited from this government's work over the last few years, some of them very rich folks but it's this party and only this party who has the guts to tax the rich and help the poor. Some fat cats have laughing all the way to the bank over the last few years and tonight I want to say I don't apologize if my eyes shed no tears and my heart don't beat at allf or these folks."
"We have a 2 billion dollar economy and yet some mothers can't feed their kids and the youths on Vernon Street can't find a job that pays more than 20 or 25 dollars a day. See sometimes it is time for full belly to tell empty belly to give heart young man. But who are you going to tell a young msn who can't feed his children that he needs to be a man when he sees the rich living like money doesn't matter. How are you going to tell a young sister who can't meet her bills that everything is ok and that she is living in a good country."
Hon. Michael Finnegan,
"Madam Speaker the minister of finance, as far as I am concerned, has more nerves than 32 bad takes. He actually boasts of how much we will save from tea, from metal buckets, scooters, salts, yeasts, and marley. First of all, only white man drink tea. Black don't buy tea so taking the tax off of tea won't benefit the people in Mesopotamia - tea is for white people."
"Madam speaker we in Mesopotamia don't buy metal buckets, we are too poor to afford metal buckets. We buy pigtails buckets from the chiney man for 50 cents. So why the government wants to pressure us to buy metal bucket from Hofius or Brodies?"
"Then scooters, we are poor black people, we don't use scooters, we use bicycles. Only rich people pickney use scooters."
"Then there is salt, why they took off taxes off of salt, that is to ker up your pressure madam speaker. The government should run a campaign against using so much salt because of rampant hypertension, I am an example."
The senate today debated and passed the 2004 - 2005 budget.